CLEO/QELS 2000:
At the Cutting Edge

The 2000 Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics and its companion Quantum Electronics and Laser Science Conference (CLEO®/QELS) will be held May 7-12 at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco, CA, with a technical exhibit from May 9 to 11. Quoting the Advance Program, "CLEO/QELS showcases groundbreaking peer-reviewed research, product and system design solutions, and an exhibit featuring the latest components and imaging subsystems displayed by more than 300 companies." CLEO is sponsored by IEEE/Lasers and Electro-Optics Society and the Optical Society of America (OSA) in cooperation with the Quantum Electronics and Optics Division of the European Physical Society and the Japanese Quantum Electronics Joint Group. QELS is sponsored by APS/Division of Laser Science, IEEE/Lasers and Electro-Optics Society, and OSA.

This year's technical program is divided into ten parallel sessions during the five days of the conference. The technical sessions, tutorial sessions, and two of the photonics-basics short courses will be held at the Moscone Center; the remaining 39 short courses will be held at the San Francisco Marriott Hotel. Together, CLEO and QELS have a total of 1554 presentations scheduled over the conferences' duration. These include three plenary papers and 13 tutorials. CLEO has 43 invited papers and 788 contributed papers, of which 215 will be presented in three poster sessions in the Moscone Exhibit Hall May 9-11. QELS has 59 invited papers and 351 contributed papers, of which 92 will be presented in the three poster sessions.

The plenary and awards session will take place in the Moscone Gateway Ballroom beginning at 8 a.m. Tuesday, May 9. After presentation of OSA's Charles Hard Townes Award, the 2000 Quantum Electronics Award of IEEE/Lasers and Electro-Optics Society, and the sponsors' fellow certificates, three plenary talks follow. Dr. Daniel Kleppner, Associate Director of the Research Laboratory of Electronics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, will describe, in "Ultracold Hydrogen from BEC to QED," his current research on the physics of hydrogen at extremely low temperatures, Bose-Einstein condensation, and ultra-precise spectroscopy. Next, Linn F. Mollenauer, a member of the Photonics Systems Research Department at Lucent Technologies' Bell Labs, will discuss "Dispersion Maps for Ultralong-Distance, Terabit Capacity WDM." Finally, Steve Joiner, manager of the Network Architecture and Technology Department of the Communication and Optical Research Laboratory of Agilent Labs, will examine "Communications Links: Where Will VCSELs Contribute?"

A Tribute to Schawlow

Preceding the conference's formal opening, on Monday, May 8, at 6 p.m., there will be a memorial symposium honoring the late Arthur Schawlow, co-inventor of the laser. Steven Chu of Stanford University will preside over special presentations by Charles Hard Townes of the University of California at Berkeley, the laser's other coinventor, Boris Stoicheff of the University of Toronto, Linn Mollenauer, and Theodore Hänsch of the University of Munich, who with Schawlow developed the theory of the laser cooling of atoms, opening up new physics research vistas. Also on Monday, beginning at 8 a.m., is a memorial symposium honoring Dan Walls, the theoretical quantum optics pioneer who also contributed to the theory of atomic Bose-Einstein condensation. Other special symposia include "High Order Correlation Effects in Condensed Matter," "Quantum Interference and Slow Light," and "Quantum Entanglement."

Poster sessions will be held Tuesday through Thursday from 1-2:30 p.m. The program committee will also accept a limited number of postdeadline papers for presentation at the meeting.

CLEO will feature three "Photonics Basics for Engineers and Technicians" (PBET) short courses, taught by educators who have worked in the field as well as in the classroom. On Sunday, May 7, from noon to 8 p.m., Shaoul Ezekiel of MIT will present "Understanding lasers and fiber optics and their applications," and Robert A. Fisher of Fisher Associates will offer "A practical introduction to polarized light." On Monday, Nick M. Massa of Springfield Technical Community College will lead "Fiber optic technology and applications."

On the business side, this year's Lasers and Electro-Optics Applications Program (LEAP) provides sessions on key issues related to high-tech business and intellectual property. They begin Wednesday, May 10, in the Convention Center. CLEO/QELS technical registrants, exhibitors, and exhibit hall visitors may attend these sessions at no cost.

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